A collection of reports on "Children’s Courts in the United States," prepared for the International Prison Commission and edited by Mr. Samuel J. Barrows, Commissioner for the United States, was published in 1904 as House Document No. 701 of the 58th Congress, 2d Session. The following account of the origin of the now widely established Juvenile Courts of America and Europe, and of their development in the United States during the first four years of their existence, is derived from those reports. {85} Commissioner Barrows opens his introduction to the collected reports with the following remarks: "If the question be asked, 'What is the most notable development in judicial principles and methods in the United States within the last five years?’ the answer may unhesitatingly be, ‘The introduction and establishment of juvenile courts.’ Never perhaps has any judicial reform made such rapid progress. Beginning in Chicago in 1899, this institution has sprung up in city after city and State after State until it is now established in eight States and eleven large cities. This progress has been made not merely by changes in procedure or legal technique, nor by the introduction of a new method; it is most of all by the introduction of a new spirit and a new aim. … It must not be supposed that the juvenile court is only a smaller court for smaller offenders or simply a court holding separate sessions for such offenders; it represents an altogether different principle. The juvenile court is a life-saving institute in society. "It is scarcely necessary to say that child-saving methods, institutions, and organizations have long flourished in the United States. The Northern States have regarded juvenile reformatories as a part of their correctional equipment, and the courts have served as vestibules for such institutions; but they have only been incidentally a part of the process. We have not before realized what the court might be and do before resorting to institutions. The children’s court still maintains relations with the reform school, but it represents in itself active and vital forces and invokes a whole range of influence and motives which are personal and formative. It appeals to the reform school not as the first, but only as the last resort. The juvenile court has discovered that the child is a child, and, as Judge Hurley says, ‘The child should be treated as a child. Instead of reformation, the thought and idea in the judge’s mind should always be formation. No child should be punished for the purpose of making an example of him.’ …